Auckland Anniversary Day

Yesterday we went to Long Bay for Auckland Anniversary day for the Aeroview Ward picnic. Sensational!

I'm so bad at taking photos on days like this! And today probably even more so cause I remembered Renee saying that her phone dropped in the water when the boys were playing in the waves at the Mt. Couldn't risk that happening so I have no pics of the kids LOVING the water. Especially Seth. He really is the most fishy baby I've ever seen!

Before we went I told Faith that Long Bay is the beach where Uncle Matthew died and she really wanted to write about it

Not sure why it was lots of Dads vs Lots of Kids + Uncle Stanie

My Lil' Joe Dirt

This little critter spent the whole 5 hours eating!!!! In this pic the chips weren't even open but he'd walked past a few chips on the ground so he just stopped and ate them for good measure!

When I asked Faith why she wasn't playing with the other kids she said pretty matter of factly 'I'm not into playing anymore Mum' as if she's so over that now that she's 5!!

The 2 little solo players plonked down side by side when they were supposed to be following us back to the car

More holiday pics

School starts back sometime next week (I better check on the exact date so Faith's not late!), so over the past week we've done a couple of cool things together.

 The girls with Mum's wig on. It looked nice on Mum, pretty rough on the girls!

The beginnings of Daddy Joe's home gym. He pulls it all out in front of the garage when he's working out, but this was late at night last week when he did a workout at about 10pm

My regular shopping helper

January Date night at Hunger Games 2

We had a cool time with the Leone boys at Extreme Entertainment where they got one hour to play on timezone games and then another hour or so in the Chipmunks style playground

Impromptu date night with my girlfriends after a trip to the Dr to check on Faith's sore ankle and Ella's scabby face sores

This is how I find the hallway when I walk to my room late at night....booby trapped with toys (at least it's not lego pieces to step on, but it's still darn annoying)

 And the room's no better. So after this night when I took photographic evidence to show them, the girls got told they can play games and read until they're tired (they go to their room at 7:15pm), but before they actually get into bed they have to pack away what they had out. I've told them I'll do a midnight room inspection and they'll miss out on something the next day if it's not ship shape. They think it's quite funny that I check their room while they're asleep so it's working well.

Yesterday we had a fantastic family day with the Halls and Leones up at Campbell's beach (Bex's parent's holiday home). It was soooooo fun to relax and spend the day together. The kids loved it and were asleep within 2 minutes of getting in the car at nearly 11pm to drive home. Ella slept in until 9am this morning and Seth slept in until 10:20am!!!!!! Now that's a sign of a good day before!

Wish I could eat like this every night! Delicious!!!!

Daddy Joe's spread

 There were a couple of moments of down time when the kids watched a movie and looked at books, literally moments though!. Other than that it was all go the entire time, running, fighting, laughing, chasing.....cool kids memories.

Now I'm thinking how can we buy a piece of land and tent on it until at some point (probably 20 years down the track) when we can build a batch of some sort. Family times, especially outside in the summer sun are the best!

Our special time with Spency

This is how excited I was to have Spency come over to our house while his Mum, Dad and Mac were at Uncle Heng's wedding a couple of days ago!!!

My goodness he came back to this plate for dinner about 10 times, not sure if that's cause he really liked it or cause after about 5 times I said there was no cake like he wanted, and so he'd have to have more dinner if he was still hungry

He loved Athletics and even ran in the last race for the 2 year old boys. I wish I'd put him in the first 2 though cause then he could have got better each time

Precious little Faith bumped her head on the playground after race one, then finally got off me and hurt her leg almost immediately. End of racing for her:(

Late night little bowl of BBQ shapes kept everyone quiet for all of 3 minutes. Spence wolfed his down first and then hopped off and walked between the girls stealing one at a time from their bowls

This pic makes him look really grumpy but it was just because the flash was hurting his eyes. He curled up here for a while and then scooted back down to the blocks (while yawning his tired little head off!)

We loved having you Spency. Talk about cute and easy!!!! And we loved your running commentaries on everything you were doing and thinking. Funny boy!!!!